New growth drives create new ground for Chinese economy

By Li Jie, Wang Junling from People’s Daily Overseas Edition

 

New drives of growth were contributing to China’s economic restructuring and upgrading, and injecting power to global economy, said guests at the ongoing Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2018, also known as Summer Davos, which kicked off in Tianjin, China’s municipality this Wednesday.

China’s economic structure and growth pattern have experienced dramatic changes as statistics showed that the turnover of China’s online retail maintained an annual growth of over 30 percent, and consumption contributed to more than 60 percent of the country’s economic growth.

New drives of growth contributed to over a third of China’s economic growth, and two thirds of the newly added urban jobs. They’ve brought prosperity to China’s future development, and triggered strong resonance among the guests.

“China’s innovations, from shared bikes to mobile payment, are developing rapidly,” Arvind Sethumadhavan, Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer at Dentsu Aegis Network Asia Pacific told People’s Daily.

He noted that any product and service that could solve social problems would find a broad market in China.

China was looking for new drives for economic growth, said Chief Strategy Officer at Accenture Omar Abbosh, adding that the country enjoyed powerful potential in product design, manufacturing and supply chain.

He was confident that China would play a major role in the innovation and application of artificial intelligence (AI) in multiple fields such as industries and consumption.

A favorable market environment is indispensable for the sound development of new economic driving forces. In this regard, China has made relentless efforts, from creating a stable macro economy, to the continuous improvement of business environment and taxation policies, making solemn promises to the world.

Eric, founder of an American AI company planning to move his business to China, told People’s Daily that nowadays China was addressing more and more concerns of foreign investors.

He cited intellectual property protection as an example, saying software industry especially needed such efforts to protect interests. In addition, foreign companies also wanted fair treatment in taxation, policy-making and services.

Zhang Chen, Chief Technology Officer of JD.com introduced that his company had invested 80 percent more in research and development in the first quarter this year. The maturing innovation platform was lowering the threshold for technological innovation, he said.

At present, AI technology was adopted  by more and more enterprises, and would be adapted to different scenarios such as smart consumption and smart supply chain to provide better services for consumers through data analysis and machine learning, he said.

Innovation would further enhance consumer experiences, lower enterprises’ cost and improve efficiency, Zhang noted.

Innovation not only existed in technologies and business models, but also mechanisms, Li Xiaojia, chief executive of HKEX Group remarked when speaking of the future solutions to boost Belt and Road construction through financing.

He compared government and market to steel and cement, respectively, saying the Belt and Road construction should match governmental and market funds so as to reinforce the building with both the steel and cement.